Arizona is Literally Too Hot for the Nissan Leaf

They say electric cars are the future. Well, if this is anything to go by, electric cars still need a lot of work for them to be a viable replacement for good-old gasoline-powered cars.

Users in Arizona are complaining that it is so hot that their Nissan Leafs are losing about 30% of their charge. One user who said that his Leaf, which was once capable of doing 90 miles on a single charge, can now do approximately 44 miles. Other owners commented that even when their batteries are fully charged, two or three lights of their 12-light battery capacity gauge would be out.

The culprit, according to Tesla's CEO Elon Musk, is the Leaf's inefficient cooling system. According to Musk, he said that the Leaf had a cut-price air cooling system which could not properly regulate temperatures. Tesla, he added, used a high-end liquid thermal management solution to keep temperatures at an optimum level.

These problems have caused dealerships in California and Washington to cut an additional US$5000 off the list price of the Leaf.